This isn’t part of BBC’s article, but, according to Statcounter, Google Search has 91% market share on all platforms and 95% on mobile. It’s surprising how it took for Google to be labeled as a monopoly.
As reported by BBC,
A US judge has ruled Google acted illegally to crush its competition and maintain a monopoly on online search and related advertising.
The landmark decision on Monday is a major blow to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and could reshape how technology giants do business.
Google was sued by the US Department of Justice in 2020 over its control of about 90% of the online search market.
It is one of several lawsuits that have been filed against the big tech companies as US antitrust authorities attempt to strengthen competition in the industry.
This case has at times been described as posing an existential threat to Google and its owner given its dominance of the search and online advertising business.
It is unclear yet what penalties Google and Alphabet will face as a result of the decision. The fines or other remedies will be decided in a future hearing.
The government has asked for “structural relief” – which could, in theory at least, mean the break-up of the company.
In his decision, US District Judge Amit Mehta said Google had paid billions to ensure it is the default search engine on smartphones and browsers.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta wrote in his 277-page opinion.
Alphabet said it plans to appeal against the ruling.
“This decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” the statement from the company said.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland, the country’s top prosecutor, hailed the ruling as a “historic win for the American people”.
“No company – no matter how large or influential – is above the law,” Mr Garland said in a statement on Monday. “The Justice Department will continue to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws.”
Federal antitrust regulators have filed other pending lawsuits against Big Tech companies – including Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple Inc – accusing them of operating unlawful monopolies.
Monday’s ruling comes after a 10-week trial in Washington DC, in which prosecutors accused Google of spending billions of dollars annually to Apple, Samsung, Mozilla and others to be pre-installed as the default search engine across platforms.
The US said Google typically pays more than $10bn (£7.8bn) a year for that privilege, securing its access to a steady stream of user data that helped maintain its hold on the market.
Doing so, prosecutors said, meant other companies have not had the opportunity or resources to meaningfully compete.
“The best testimony for that, for the importance of defaults, is Google’s cheque book,” argued Department of Justice lawyer Kenneth Dintzer during the trial.
Google’s search engine is a big revenue generator for the company, bringing in billions of dollars thanks in large part to advertising displayed on its results pages.
Google’s lawyers defended the company by saying that users are attracted to their search engine because they find it useful, and that Google is investing to make it better for consumers.
“Google is winning because it’s better,” said Google’s lawyer John Schmidtlein during closing arguments earlier this year.
Mr Schmidtlein also argued during the trial that Google still faces intense competition, not just from general search engine firms, such as Microsoft’s Bing, but more specialised sites and apps that people use to find restaurants, airline flights and more.
In his ruling, Judge Mehta concluded that being the default search engine is “extremely valuable real estate” for Google.
“Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share,” Judge Mehta wrote.
Another case against the technology company over its advertising technology is scheduled to go to trial in September. In Europe, meanwhile, Google has been fined billions in monopoly cases.
As reported by ANandTech,
Following Intel’s run of financial woes and Raptor Lake chip stability issues, the company could use some good news on a Friday. And this week they’re delivering just that, with the first version of the eagerly awaited microcode fix for desktop Raptor Lake processors – as well as the first detailed explanation of the underlying issue.
The new microcode release, version 0x129, is Intel’s first stab at addressing the elevated voltage issue that has seemingly been the cause of Raptor Lake processor degradation over the past year and a half. Intel has been investigating the issue all year, and after a slow start, in recent weeks has begun making more significant progress, identifying what they’re calling an “elevated operating voltage” issue in high-TDP desktop Raptor Lake (13th & 14th Generation Core) chips. Back in late July the company was targeting a mid-August release date for a microcode patch to fix (or rather, prevent) the degradation issue, and just ahead of that deadline, Intel has begun shipping the microcode to their motherboard partners.
Even with this new microcode, however, Intel is not done with the stability issue. Intel is still investigating whether it’s possible to improve the stability of already-degraded processors, and the overall tone of Intel’s announcement is very much that of a beta software fix – Intel won’t be submitting this specific microcode revision for distribution via operating system updates, for example. So even if this microcode is successful in stopping ongoing degradation, it seems that Intel hasn’t closed the book on the issue entirely, and that the company is presumably working towards a fix suitable for wider release.
So just what does the 0x129 microcode update do? In short, it caps the voltage of affected Raptor Lake desktop chips at a still-toasty (but in spec) 1.55v. As noted in Intel’s previous announcements, excessive voltages seem to be at the cause of the issue, so capping voltages at what Intel has determined is the proper limit should prevent future chip damage.
The company’s letter to the community also outlines, for the first time, just what is going on under the hood with degraded chips. Those chips that have already succumbed to the issue from repeated voltage spikes have deteriorated in such a way that the minimum voltage needed to operate the chip – Vmin – has increased beyond Intel’s original specifications. As a result, those chips are no longer getting enough voltage to operate.
Seasoned overclockers will no doubt find that this is a familiar story, as this is one of the ways that overclocked processors degrade over time. In those cases – as it appears to be with the Raptor Lake issue – more voltage is needed to keep a chip stable, particularly in workloads where the voltage to the chip is already sagging.
And while all signs point to this degradation being irreversible (and a lot of RMAs in Intel’s future), there is a ray of hope. If Intel’s analysis is correct that degraded Raptor Lake chips can still operate properly with a higher Vmin voltage, then there is the possibility of saving at least some of these chips, and bringing them back to stability.
This “Vmin shift,” as Intel is calling it, is the company’s next investigative target. According to the company’s letter, they are aiming to provide updates by the “end of August.”
In the meantime, Intel’s eager motherboard partners have already begun releasing BIOSes with the new microcode, with ASUS and MSI even jumping the gun and sending out BIOSes before Intel had a chance to properly announce the microcode. Both vendors are releasing these as beta BIOSes, reflecting the general early nature of the microcode fix itself. And while we expect most users will want to get this microcode in place ASAP to mitigate further damage on affected chips, it would be prudent to treat these beta BIOSes as just that.
Along those lines, as noted earlier, Intel is only distributing the 0x129 microcode via BIOS updates at this time. This microcode will not be coming to other systems via operating system updates. At this point we still expect distribution via OS updates to be the end game for this fix, but for now, Intel isn’t providing a timeline or other guidance for when that might happen. So for PC enthusiasts, at least, a BIOS update is the only way to get it for now.
Finally, Intel’s message also provides a bit of guidance on the performance impact of the new microcode, based on their internal testing. Previously the company has indicated that they expected no significant performance impact, and based on their expanded testing, by and large this remains the case. However, there are going to be some workloads that suffer from performance regressions as a result.
So far, Intel has found a couple of workloads where they are seeing regressions. This includes PugetBench GPU Effects Score and, on the gaming side of matters, Hitman 3: Dartmoor. Otherwise, virtually everything else Intel has tested, including common benchmarks like Cinebench, and major games, are not showing performance regressions. So the overall outcome of the fix is not quite a spotless recovery, but it’s also not leading to widespread performance losses, either.
As reported by TechRadar,
A version-rollback vulnerability has been discovered by a cybersecurity researcher that allows a fully patched Windows machine to be downgraded to older version, allowing the exploitation of previously patched zero-days and vulnerabilities.
Alon Leviev unveiled his findings at Black Hat USA 2024 and DEF CON 32 (2024) as a tool named Windows Downdate.
Leviev says the tool can be used to make “the term “fully patched” meaningless on any Windows machine in the world.”
Leviev started his journey with the aim of discovering a version-rollback exploit using Windows Update as a starting point. It turned out Windows Update had a significant flaw that allowed for a full takeover of the update process, including downgrading Windows versions.
By also exploiting access to critical OS components, including dynamic link libraries (DLLs), drivers, and NT kernel, Leviev was able to have the Windows machine report it was fully updated and unable to download any updates without having recovery and scanning tools detect anything out of the ordinary.
Leviev then also discovered the virtualization stack could be tampered with as well, allowing a number of previously secure applications to be exposed to previously patched privilege escalation vulnerabilities, with Credential Guard’s Isolated User Mode Process, Secure Kernel, and Hyper-V’s hypervisor all being suceptible.
Finally, Windows virtualization-based security was also disabled even when secured by UEFI locks. This allowed Leviev to also disable security features such as Credential Guard and Hypervisor-Protected Code integrity. According to Leviev’s knowledge, “this is the first time VBS’s UEFI locks have been bypassed without physical access.”
Leviev offers a number of suggestions to make operating systems less vulnerable to downgrade attacks, including:
- Researching and implementing security measures that check for and prevent the downgrade of critical OS components.
- Reviewing all design features as an attack surface, even old ones.
- Research in-the-wild-attacks to evaluate whether other components or areas are vulnerable to attack.
Based on Reuters‘ and The Verge’s articles on the subject.
On Thursday, Apple changed its policy in the European Union to allow developers to communicate with their customers outside its App Store after the commission charged Apple for breaking the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in June.
Starting this fall, all developers in the EU will be able to include links that lead to purchases outside their apps. The updated rules will let developers tell their users about offers on the web, on another app store, or otherwise “at a destination of their choice.” It allows developers to include as many links as they want and gives users an option to disable in-app scare screens.
But, this new feature comes with large fees that it is hard to imagine any developer using it. Once a developer adds external links, Apple charges a “store services fee” on the sale of all digital goods and services that occur within one year after the user installs the app. This fee applies to any platform, like another app store or the developer’s website, even if that user never clicks the link. If the user reinstalls the app, the one year clock resets. The fee is 20 percent for apps only offered through the App Store; apps that add support for third-party app stores pay 10 percent, though they’ll face other associated fees.
Additionally, Apple is implementing a 5 percent “initial acquisition fee” on digital goods and services purchased “on any platform” within one year of when a user first installs the app. Altogether, that means Apple can take up to a 25 percent commission on purchases made within one year of installation, including off-platform subscriptions and autorenewals.
“Apple’s terms make it completely uneconomical for developers to distribute their apps through both the Apple App Store and competing iOS app stores,” Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, said in a post on X discussing the new rules.
Currently, the EU is investigating Apple over its restrictive policies on alternative app stores and its new Core Technology Fee, which requires developers on third-party stores to pay 50 euro cents per install for apps with over 1 million downloads.
As reported by TechCrunch,
Apple has threatened to remove creator platform Patreon from the App Store if creators use unsupported third-party billing options or disable transactions on iOS, instead of using Apple’s own in-app purchasing system for Patreon’s subscriptions. In a blog post and email to Patreon creators about upcoming changes to membership in the iOS app, the company says it’s begun a 16-month-long migration process to move all creators to Apple’s iOS in-app purchase system by November 2025.
Patreon also informed creators it will switch them over to subscription billing as of November 2024, but they will be able to decide whether to price their memberships at a higher fee to cover Apple’s commission or decide if they want to absorb the fee themselves. In addition, creators can opt to delay the migration in their Patreon settings to November 2025, the company said. However, if creators choose the latter option, they won’t be able to offer memberships in the iOS app until they adopt Apple’s iOS in-app purchase system, as Apple’s rules will apply as of this November.
The announcement serves as another example of how Apple’s App Store rules have been applied unevenly — an accusation that Apple has faced in the past from critics, including Fortnite maker Epic Games, which sued the tech giant over antitrust issues. While Epic largely lost that lawsuit, as the court ruled Apple was not a monopolist, it did decide the iPhone maker would have to allow links to other payment options inside their apps. As a result, Apple now allows developers to promote their subscriptions via links to a website, but with a 27% commission instead of the standard 30%, or 12% instead of 15% for auto-renewing subscriptions in year two. (Apple’s compliance with the court’s injunction is still being fought in court.)
Despite Apple’s rules and policies, Patreon had existed in an odd sort of gray area, as some of its subscription-based offerings could be consumed in its app while others could not. Another possible reason for the Patreon exception was due to the fact that many users didn’t come to Patreon itself to discover creators and content, Patreon CEO Jack Conte told tech news site The Verge in 2021. Instead, the discovery took place through other channels. Though the company admitted it didn’t have any sort of special contract with Apple to avoid the App Store fees, the app had been able to skirt Apple’s in-app billing requirements for some time.
Clearly, Patreon is not happy with the recent pressure from Apple to now comply with its policies, as it tells creators that neither of the options presented — either raising their subscription prices or eating the cost themselves — is “ideal.”
“Most creators on Patreon use subscription billing,” Patreon’s blog post points out. “Over the past few years, we’ve slowly rolled it out, tackling each hurdle that has come up to ensure that the migration is not disruptive for creators. That’s the way we like to roll out products. Unfortunately, because of Apple’s timelines and constraints, we can’t continue to do it this way. Instead of helping creators move to subscription billing if and when they feel like it’s right for them, we’re now forced to migrate all creators on Apple’s timeline.”
The company reminded creators that Apple’s fees only apply to the iOS app and that creators can continue to offer the same prices on the web and Android. It also advised creators to send their fans to a Help Center article that explains iOS fees so subscribers “can better understand the implications of where they choose to make their purchases.”
